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Some Bay Area residents woke up yesterday to a 4.1 magnitude earthquake.  According to various reports, Google had integrated that news in its search results somewhere between  two minutes to 10 minutes afterward.  Although Google said their Bay Area data centers had the feed from the US Geological Survey Feed in less than two minutes, most people saw the real-time results in about six minutes. Read more

Well, there’s no limits to the lengths Google will go to collect the world’s data.  Monday, Google introduced Goo.gl, the URL shortener.  The limiting factor, however, is that you must use Google’s Toolbar to do so. The toolbar icon allows you to share with nearly every social service you ever heard of.

Is this Google’s way of getting around obscure, shortened URLs?  Does this mean that since Google will now own shortened URLs, they will auto-index the correct full URL and continue to crawl more content?  Smart!

What’s next? Is there no limit to what Google will offer for free? Is there any limit to the information that Google can search and index?

The Official Google Blog reports today new types of search ads. Citing that they are committed to “giving you the information you want,” Google is unrolling sponsored links that include many different “extras.”  The blog shows details on ads with extra links to the site advertising, maps and videos embedded within the ad space, and even specific products from an advertiser.

Google is also unrolling a feature that allows users to “Compare Sponsored Results.”  That’s right, you want to comparison shop the AdWords customers?  – Google’s got a page for that!  You too can view all of Google’s advertisers at the same time and comparison shop for just the right Winter coat or perhaps the best loan rate.  Since you are viewing ads, are those more impressions for which advertisers are going to be charged?

Keep in mind, this is Google’s second large advertising change this month. Last week, those fine folks at Search Engine Land reported Google was experimenting with paid inclusion.

Through it all, Google claims they will “remain loyal” to their “core principle: that getting the right ad to the right person at the right time matters.”  Really. We all thought it had something to do with not doing evil things.

And the business of search keeps on growing…

Well, two weeks in, I still can’t say enough about it and I still keep finding new features.  Is it as good as an iPhone?  I don’t know, I don’t care.  Does it make calls, keep my schedules in sync, organize all my emails, appointments and tasks?  Yes.

Is it easy to type on? Yes.

Are all the cool apps that the iPhone have on it?  Well, it depends on your definition of “cool,” I guess, but yes.  The Weather Channel app is exactly the same.  Many things the iPhone needs an “app” for are built-in functions, from what I’ve read.

Everyone has different needs.  This device exceeds all mine and I still find cool and new uses for it. Read more

Engadget is reporting a phone conference scheduled between Lowell McAdam and Eric Schmidt , respective CEOs of Verizon and Google. While no facts have been confirmed, the rumors abound that an Android-based phone will be discussed.

Frankly, Verizon is long overdue for the “next cool gadget phone.”  AT&T has had the iPhone locked up and all the other Android phones have all been T-Mobile. With all the brouhaha over Chrome OS and the rumors that it would be mobile-device bound, that would be a pleasant surprise.  AndroidAndMe.com is already reporting a Verizon-bound Android 2.0 phone, the Motorola Tao, will be launched on December 1.

We’ll (hopefully) know more this afternoon.

CNET News is reporting Google services outages World-Wide .

Granted, this is not a normal occurrence, and (you would think) this would most certainly not become a regular issue.  However, I think the quote from Twitter user @Tadiera says it all:

“The Internet dies with out Google. Can’t get to my bank Web site because it’s waiting on ‘google-analytics.com.’ This is made of lame,” said Twitter user Tadiera.

I repeat what I wrote earlier this week: If you’re a large company, you do not want to rely on Google Analytics.  At this point, the little guy is now suffering.

From @Google on twitter:

We’re aware some users are having trouble accessing some Google services. We’re looking into it, and we’ll update everyone soon.

C’est la vie.

Updated: 3:30 PM

Oops, we’re sorry, air traffic control rerouted our flight.  That’s the answer from Google about their outage.

One of the cool things about Google is their laid-back attitudes.  It’s what makes them, Google. It’s also what makes them successful and desireable to work for. But 14% of Google’s user base is a lot of affected users.  On the search or mail front, that’s annoying and inconvenient.  On the analytics side, it’s lost data that can never come back.  In some cases, it’s your site’s pages that were never served which is potentially loss of business and certainly inconvenience for your customers and potential-customers.

Google’s non-technical answer is appropriate. However, the short reponse without reassuring their customers it won’t happen again is as tasteless as an airline meal.

The world loves Google, right?  How can you complain with free Web search, free email, free blogs, free picture sharing, free video sharing and all the disk space in the world with which to do it?  So when Google released Google Analytics, we all said, “why not?” Read more

Not even letting the fury of ire from their bandwidth cap plans cool, Time Warner hit back announcing that the planned DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade to the much faster 50Mbps broadband service will not happen in the four markets that voiced their disapproval of the bandwidth caps.

While no official press release from the company seems to exist either way on the subject, Time Warner’s VP of Public Relations, Alex Dudley seemed to tell one blog reported exactly why there’s no DOCSIS upgrade in sight for Texas, North Carolina and Rochester, NY:

The image at right depects a Twitter search result from the conversation between Stacey Higginbotham from Gigaom and Time Warner’s PR Rep, Alex Dudley. Read more

Time Warner really needs to get their collective heads on straight for their future.  The defense of  “those who use more should pay more” is fine until they pair it with the lie that their costs go up when their customers use more.

Using publicly accessible financial statements filed with the SEC and readily available on Google Finance, Time Warner’s total revenue has nearly doubled from $8.8 Billion at end-of-year 2005 to a whopping $17.2 Billion at end-of-year 2008.  Gross profit has mirrored those numbers, growing from $4.9 Billion in 2005 to over $9 Billion in 2008. The percentage  increases are as close as you’ll see to a 1:1 revenue-to-profit ratio. Read more

Kudos to Google for going too far this April Fool’s day a job well-accomplished this year!

Google didn’t disappoint, keeping with the tradition of their April Fool’s pranks.  This year, they carried a unified message with Google’s CADIE, and it would appear that every department got involved in this effort. Read more

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